Top of Mind Thursday September 15, 2016: Wells Goes Way Too Far…and Not Far Enough

Last week we learned that Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million in fines for opening nearly 2 million fraudulent accounts that customers neither requested nor wanted.

On Tuesday, CEO John Stumpf sent out an email to customers that basically said, we didn’t get things right and we’re sorry.

Gee, that should make things all better now. Or not.

What happened at Wells was not a one-time mistake. It was systemic criminal acts propagated throughout the company for years. In fact, in the last five years, 5300 workers were fired for improper sales processes.

Time to stop pretending this is business as usual. The only way to heal this is for senior management to step up, accept full responsibility, say mea culpa, and put together an aggressive plan to be more open and accessible to customers moving forward.

Absent that kind of leadership and transparency, the sound Wells Fargo is likely to be hearing is that of customers closing accounts and catching the next stage coach out of Dodge.

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